Industrial marketing and purchasing is an interesting phenomenon. On the surface it appears as very mundane, a simple day-to-day activity performed by purchasers, sales personnel, and technical specialists; i.e. most often by professions representing ‘middle management’. As such, it is not surrounded with any of the greater prestige ascribed to more hyped business activities, such as financing and strategy. Furthermore, industrial marketing and purchasing is seldom recognised as being of any greater importance for society at large. In policy circles, for example the UN, OECD and EU, where they stress the importance of innovation, productivity and growth, industrial marketing and purchasing is rarely mentioned as a related phenomenon.
Behind the scenes, however, an empirical, much more challenging view is outlined. When the content and the effects of industrial marketing and purchasing processes are scrutinised empirically, these activities appear as perhaps the most important source for business development, industrial renewal, efficiency and innovation. From this perspective, industrial marketing and purchasing seems to be a critical phenomenon for creating prosperity for both companies and communities and for general economic growth. It is this role of industrial marketing and purchasing that we highlight and discuss in this article. Based on extensive empirical research results, we argue that interaction is the main ingredient in these processes. This implies that the supplier–customer interaction has a central development function for efficiency and innovativeness, for companies as well as for the economy at large. Thus, there is a strong need to include and consider this key engine for dynamics (and its role in developing materialised structures as well as ideas) in any theoretical study of economic development.
The economic world is full of day-to-day interactions where millions of deliveries of goods and services are supplied and used — the result of industrial marketing and purchasing activities. This means that a number of processes are on-going, where goods and services are related to established material and immaterial investments in companies and organisations, in ways that stretch from standardised activities to completely new trial-and-error-like development endeavours. It also means that people representing a number of different professions, engaged in small and large companies, governmental and non-governmental organisations, are involved in millions of problem-solving discussions related to performed – or not yet performed – business solutions, in meetings, by phone, by email or over the Internet.
There are a wide variety of industrial marketing and purchasing interactions. Sometimes they involve a few people representing a narrow supplier–user interface, where what is going to be delivered and how it is going to be used is easily solved; many of these types of processes are highly standardised and routinised. Other interactions are more complex and require intense problem-solving, including involvement of a set of managers and specialists related to both sides of the supplier–customer interfaces. The interactions can also concern future deliveries and use of goods and services when, for different reasons, established solutions no longer work. In these situations, neither what is going to be delivered nor how any alternative solutions can be used, can be clearly outlined in advance. Together, all of these interactions concerning the creation, utilisation and adaptation of objects and ideas, constitute industrial marketing and purchasing. The outcome results in the development, supply and use of specific products, processes and services. It results in efficiency and innovations and can be measured in terms of profit numbers on a company level, as well as in terms of trade, growth and GNP figures on a national level. Thus, it has definite consequences for single companies and for nations as well as for international development (Håkansson, Ford, Gadde, Snehota, & Waluszewski, 2009).
The never ending story, or the dynamics of the business landscape, has a main distinct source — interaction. And it is a source with distributed and multifaceted effects — wanted by some, unwanted by others. Interaction means to react on the involved counterparts' acting. Thus, the interaction process has effects on each resource involved. Therefore, each single interaction has a different effect for each actor with an interest in the involved resources. Furthermore, no interaction is an island; the resources and those representing them are involved in other interaction processes and are bringing with them what's achieved in earlier interactions. This means that the outcome of one interaction process creates effects – but different ones – in other interaction processes. These distributed effects will be beneficial for some interaction processes, while for others they will create severe obstacles. Thus, the never ending story is far from a simple, linear chain of actions; it is a complex pattern of actions and reactions where the effects on the resources involved are distributed among different interactions — for better and for worse.
